Feminist Link Round Up 10.26.14

Women Break Through On TV & B.O., But Glass Ceiling Remains

Lauren Zalaznick, former topper at NBCUniversal as well as cable nets Bravo and Oxygen, noted that the most powerful show runner going right now isShonda Rhimes. “There is some movement that may be systemic or it may be cyclical, and we don’t know,” she said, noting also the unparalleled presence of shows with strong female characters who are 45-plus.

The picture in TV is brighter than in film. “I very much feel that there’s an institutional resistance to female storytelling,” said producer Lydia Dean Pilcher (The Sisterhood of Night, The Talented Mr. Ripley).

“Who can tell stories? Anyone who has a compelling story that will drive box office,” said Stacy Smith, director of the Media, Diversity & Social Change Initiative at USC’s Annenberg School.

Smith pointed to results of a study she’d conducted about the prevalence (or lack thereof) of female producers and directors across the top 100 films in Hollywood. In 2013, for instance, 1.9 percent of the top 100 films in Hollywood had a female director, down from 2.7 percent in 2007.

So what are the persistent barriers? What you might expect, the panelists suggested, from long-standing attitudes that men are better at handling “the money” to a sort of Stockholm Syndrome among women in the business who remain vastly outnumbered by men.

The gates will come down, several panelists said, not by political outreach but simply by the sheer number of female-driven stories, on TV and film, that produce undeniable business.

Um, how are the barriers going to come down if women are outnumbered in the business?  I think outreach is necessary to give women the chance to produce more stories on tv and film.

* * * *

Women make up almost half of all gamers

For years, Gamescom—one of the world’s biggest annual trade exhibitions for digital gamers—has been a man’s world.

But games developers now are increasingly targeting a growing community of female gamers, as a way of boosting an industry expected to generate sales of $100 billion this year.

“We see a big and fast increase in female players, over all genres,” said Fredrik Rundqvist, a games producer at Ubisoft SA UBI.FR -0.80% ‘s Massive Entertainment studio.

Ubisoft has good reason to take notice. The company ran into controversy earlier this year when it scrapped the option to play as a female character in its coming Assassin’s Creed Unity game—an action game set in Paris during the French Revolution—slated for release this fall.

That decision—the company said including women characters would take too much production work—caused a backlash in the game world, another sign that women gamers could no longer be ignored. Ubisoft, however, has introduced a female character—albeit a nonplaying one—a Templar warrior called Elise, into the game, and has told media that its future titles will feature more diverse lead characters, without giving specific examples.

The timing seems to be right.

Female gamers made up about 48% of the game-playing public in the U.S. this year, according to a report recently published by the Entertainment Software Association, a U.S. game industry trade group.

That is up sharply from 40% in 2010. What is more, women over 18-years-old now represent a significantly larger portion of the U.S. game-playing population than boys under 18, a demographic that has traditionally been seen as a core target group for game companies. The ESA based its findings on a study of 2,200 U.S. households.

The article goes on to point out that there has been a surge in mobile gaming, which has contributed to more women playing games.  Unlike gamers though (who love to claim that those who play games on their phones or tablets aren’t “true gamers”, which is a version of the No True Scotsman fallacy), the article is not distinguishing between people who play games on consoles like Xbox360 or PS4 from those who play non video games. The article includes all games, which is as it should be, bc “gaming” encompasses more than just playing games on a console. It also includes gaming online, on mobile devices, or board games. Gamers don’t like this of course, but they don’t get to decide for others if they’re a gamer or not. So they can take their shit and shove it.

* * * *

 Gene Simmons thinks women should stop relying on men

 

Tantaros prompts the advice by bringing up a section of Gene Simmons book— Me, Inc.: Build an Army of One, Unleash Your Inner Rock God, Win in Life and Business—in which he tells women to put off having families until they establish a way to make money for themselves, because they can’t do both.

Men have to make a living, but women have the option of becoming a housewife—which only works, he says, until the man runs away. At that point, he graciously explains, “you have to balance your budget” and “you have to spend less than the amount of money that comes in.” (Unfortunately, Gene does not explain what the words “budget” and “money” mean, so I zoned out.) He continues:

“This is a very complex and difficult question to answer so I’m going to put it as simply as possible. Women: Stop depending on men. It’s as simple as that. Imagine there are no men in life. Find out that thing that you’re good for that makes the money and then get married and or have children from a position of strength.”

What a patronizing answer. Here’s a hint Gene, millions of women already knew this and are doing that very thing. Of course, institutionalized sexism presents obstacles that prevent women from attaining their goals. That’s m’ first problem.

Another problem I have is with the idea that women should find a job that pays money and then start a family. The opinion operates under the assumption that this should be a woman’s goal. I disagree. Some women want to get married and have kids. Others do not. There is no correct path for a woman to take. A woman’s life is her own. If she doesn’t want to get married or have kids. that is her choice.  As a society, we need to stop pressuring women to get married and have kids.  Women are in charge of their lives and they can make the decisions they feel are best for themselves without outside interference.

* * * *

Law enforcement officials violate privacy of women they’ve arrested

In yet another example of men acting as if they’re entitled to women’s bodies, a California Highway Patrol Officer is in hot water after admitting to stealing nude and semi-nude photos from the phones of women he’s arrested over the years.  Worse, he shared the images with fellow law enforcement officers.

CHP Officer Sean Harrington, 35, of Martinez, also confessed to stealing explicit photos from the cellphone of a second Contra Costa County DUI suspect in August and forwarding those images to at least two CHP colleagues. The five-year CHP veteran called it a “game” among officers, according to an Oct. 14 search warrant affidavit.

Harrington told investigators he had done the same thing to female arrestees a “half dozen times in the last several years,” according to the court records, which included leering text messages between Harrington and his Dublin CHP colleague, Officer Robert Hazelwood.

Contra Costa County prosecutors are investigating and say the conduct of the officers — none of whom has been charged so far — could compromise any criminal cases in which they are witnesses. CHP Commissioner Joe Farrow said in a statement that his agency too has “active and open investigations” and cited a similar case several years ago in Los Angeles involving a pair of officers.

“The allegations anger and disgust me,” Farrow said. “We expect the highest levels of integrity and moral strength from everyone in the California Highway Patrol, and there is no place in our organization for such behavior.”

You know what? I see comments of this nature on articles about police abuses of power on a regular basis. Law Enforcement officials will express anger or disgust with the actions of police officers when they do shit like this. My question is, what steps are being taken to prevent cops from doing stuff like this? There are innumerable examples of police officers across the country abusing their power. What is being done about this? Are departments undergoing sensitivity training classes? Ethics classes?  Racism classes?  Or is this a case of “deal with the problem after it happens, rather than try to prevent problems in the first place”?

Rick Madsen, the Danville attorney for the 23-year-old San Ramon woman who was the first to report Harrington, said the implications of the case are “far-reaching and very damaging.”

“The callousness and depravity with which these officers communicated about my client is dehumanizing, horribly offensive and degrading to all women,” he said. “It’s going to lead to another level of mistrust and skepticism to the motive of law enforcement in general.”

Law enforcement agencies across the country, if they were interested in doing their job effectively, would see incidents like this as a sign that their agencies need to be overhauled. These problems are not unique to an agency here and there. As with the wider culture, sexism, homophobia, and racism are prevalent in the law enforcement world. It’s made worse given that they have a level of power that regular citizens do not have. Which means when they abuse that power and act in an unacceptable manner, the damage done is far greater than if the same thing were done by the average citizen.

As this newspaper first reported earlier this week, the investigation began with a single incident: Harrington’s conduct during the Aug. 29 arrest of the San Ramon woman. The woman discovered that photos had been stolen from her phone five days after her release, when she noticed on her iPad that the photos had been sent to an unknown number. A record of the messages had been deleted from her iPhone, but the phone had been synced to the iPad.

In his investigation, Holcombe compared video surveillance and time-stamped text messages from the woman’s phone and determined Harrington was in possession of the woman’s phone at the moment the photos were forwarded. The woman — who registered a blood-alcohol level of 0.29 percent, more than three times the legal limit — was being processed in the Martinez County Jail when the photos were stolen, according to court records.

During questioning, Harrington admitted to stealing five photographs from the woman and said he forwarded at least one to Hazelwood, according to court records.

Reached by phone by this newspaper on Friday, Hazelwood declined to comment. Messages to the other two officers were not returned.

“Harrington said he first learned of this scheme when he was working in the Los Angeles office,” Holcombe wrote in the affidavit. “Harrington said when he was assigned to the Dublin office, he learned from other officers that they would access the cell phones of female arrestees and look for nude photographs of them. Harrington said if photographs were located, the officers would then text the photographs to other sworn members of the office, and, to non-CHP individuals. Harrington described this scheme as a game.”

A game.

Violating the privacy of women is a game to this pissant.  Faith in humanity -1000.

* * * *

I can’t believe it’s 2014 and people are still being hung

A 26-year-old Iranian woman convicted of murdering a man she accused of trying to rape her as a teenager was hanged on Saturday, the official news agency IRNA said, despite international pleas for her life to be spared.

Reyhaneh Jabbari walked to the gallows at dawn on Saturday in Tehran’s Evin prison after failing to secure a reprieve from the murder victim’s relatives within the 10-day deadline set by sharia law in force since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

The death sentence sparked U.S. and European Union condemnation and the government of President Hassan Rouhani, who won election last year on promises of liberal reform at home and easing Iran’s isolation abroad, to intervene to get it commuted.

Justice Minister Mostafa Pour-Mohammadi said in early October that a “good ending” was in sight, but official media reported later that the slain man’s family could not be persuaded to approve leniency for Jabbari.

Jabbari was sentenced to death in accordance with Koranic “qisas”, or eye for an eye, law after being found guilty of stabbing dead an older man with a kitchen knife in 2007.

This is retributive justice and it violates the right to life that all human persons possess. No higher purpose was served in killing Jabbari. Her attempted rapist isn’t brought back to life.  All that’s left are two devastated families, rather than one. How in the world does this make the world, or even just Iran, a better place?

I despise ‘eye for an eye’ “justice”. It focuses on payback, or revenge for actual or perceived crimes. It also violates the human rights we all possess.  It’s a barbaric form of “justice” yet people keep embracing it. Perhaps it’s because punitive justice is preferred to rehabilitative justice, but it’s a shame no matter the reason. Another reason for my opposition to retributive justice:  there are enough people in the world suffering and dying and such barbarism only contributes to more of the same. I want to live a life with minimal amounts of suffering and anguish and I want the same for everyone else, so I oppose things like retributive justice and capital punishment. Part of the efforts of social justice activists is to make the world a better place. Part of that is reducing violence. There’s also the problem of governments killing their own citizens. That stands at odds with the function of government, which is (in part) to protect its citizenry, not to kill them.  I long for the day when retributive justice is consigned to the dustbins of history.

{advertisement}
Feminist Link Round Up 10.26.14
{advertisement}